Having the Eyes of Your Heart Enlightened

Resuming the Study of Paul's Prayer in Ephesians

0:02 I turn this morning, after a lapse of a couple of months, to that book that I trust someday that we'll work through, the book of Ephesians.

0:17 After being much exercised as to just what direction the ministry should take, now that we've completed the series, the brief series on the tongue, I have had no liberty but to go back to this profound epistle of the Apostle Paul to the church at Ephesus, and to the churches in that area, and we resume our studies in the second major paragraph of the first chapter, which is the prayer of the Apostle Paul. I shall read verses 15 through 20, and it's an awkward place to break because the sentence continues to the end of the chapter, but I shall break it off at that point nonetheless. For this cause I also, having heard...

1:09 I heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which is among you, and the love which ye show towards all the saints. Cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of His calling, what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what the exceeding greatness of His power to us were to believe, according to the strength of His might, which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead, and made Him to sit at His right hand in the heavenly places. Let us once again look to God in prayer for the health and assistance of His own grace and spirit, as we come to His word.

2:16 Father, if ever we felt our need of the very thing that Paul mentions as his prayer, it is when we come to a passage such as this. We feel that there are concepts that so transcend the natural mind and its ability to grasp, that we too would pray that you would give to us as the Father of glory, the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge, of yourself, that we may know. O Lord, open up to us that portion of the sacred book that we seek to understand this morning for our good and for your glory, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Context and Principal Concerns of Paul's Prayer

3:06 As we resume our studies in this great prayer of the Apostle, I would remind you that we have already studied in detail the factors which moved the Apostle to renew himself, to renewed prayer. It was the report of the continuing faith and the increasing love of the Ephesians, verse 15, For this cause, I also, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus, which is among you, and the love which ye show to all the saints, cease not to give thanks, pray. So we've studied together the factors which moved him to renewed prayer. We've looked at the essential characteristics, of his prayer, verses 16 and the first part of verse 17. The object of his prayer was the God of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is identified as the Father of glory. The right object of his prayer was also joined with the right attendant of all true prayer, namely praise and thanksgiving. We cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in our prayers.

4:16 From that point on to the end of the chapter, you have what I have called the principal concerns of his prayer. And the first principal concern of Paul's prayer is for this gift that he asks of the Father for the Ephesians. I cease not to pray that God would give to you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. We've identified this gift as the Holy Spirit, a spirit seeing.

4:50 We have seen that the function of this gift is the Spirit operating as the spirit of wisdom and illumination, and then we've seen that the sphere in which that gift is operative is the knowledge of God. This gift does not operate in the realm of mere intellectual disciplines, but it's as men know God in all the richness of that biblical phrase, that this gift is to be given to them. And this gift is to operate for the increase of the knowledge of God. We come today to this little phrase, having the eyes of your heart enlightened, and I'm calling it the necessary prerequisite for the reception of this gift. The gift for which he prays is the spirit to be given as the spirit of wisdom and revelation. The sphere in which that gift is operated is the sphere of the knowledge of God. But not all men can receive that gift.

The Prerequisite: Having the Eyes of Your Heart Enlightened

5:53 Not all men are operating within that sphere of the knowledge of God. And so we have here what we may rightly call the necessary prerequisite for the reception of this gift. Namely, having had the eyes of our hearts enlightened. Now you say, Pastor, why do you say a prerequisite?

6:15 Isn't that a part of the prayer itself? No. It should be regarded as a parenthesis. As one astute commentator has said, and I quote, these words are not to be considered as a part of the prayer proper, but what is taken for granted by Paul, and these words are to be put in a parenthesis, and the following words connected with the preceding verse.

6:42 Now the reason for this, is not obvious in the English translation, but in the language in which Paul wrote, a literal translation of the phrase would be, having had and still having the eyes of your heart enlightened. So look at it now like a parenthesis, and follow as I read it. For this cause, I pray for you, that the God of the Lord Jesus Christ would give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, in the knowledge of him, parenthesis, having already had the eyes of your heart enlightened, end of parenthesis, that ye may know. So he assumes that the condition of the Ephesians, for whom he is asking this gift, is one of previous spiritual enlightenment. Now for you children, the big word prerequisite simply means, that which is necessary before. If you're, ever to learn algebra, the prerequisites are, that you learn the numbers, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, simple arithmetic and addition, and that you learn the alphabet, A, B, C, D, especially X and Y. So if you're to know algebra, the things that are necessary before, the prerequisites are, an understanding of our numerical system, basic math,

8:08 and an understanding of our alphabet. Those are the things which must go before, or, you'll never attack and master algebra. So then, if we're to have the spirit operating, as the spirit of wisdom and revelation, in the knowledge of God, to the end that we may know, what is the hope of his calling, the riches of the glory of his inheritance, and the saints in the exceeding greatness of his power, the thing that must go before, is basic spiritual illumination. You cannot have the gift of increased illumination, unless you know, the gift of initial illumination.

Meaning of 'The Heart' in Biblical Context

8:47 So much then, for why I've entitled the message the way I have, consider with me, first of all, the meaning of these words. They're rich words. They're words which you read over in a matter of a couple of seconds, but when you begin to examine them, you've hooked in to one of the richest veins of biblical truth, and so we'll try to explore that vein, trace it down a bit. What does it mean, the eyes of the heart having been enlightened, and then, for the remainder of the time, we'll consider the message these words convey.

9:23 First of all, then, the meaning of the words. These words, the eyes of the heart, a captivating phrase. Let's start with the word, the heart. What does the heart mean in the Bible?

9:37 And here we must remember one of the admonitions Mr. Morey has been giving us in our adult class, don't put a 20th century English meaning on a Bible word. For us in the 20th century, when we say heart, we mean primarily, not exclusively, but primarily, the deep seat of our emotional life. When we talk about being moved in our hearts, loving something with the heart, we are thinking predominantly of the seat of our emotional life, but the Bible word for heart is far broader than this.

10:18 It takes in much more than just the emotions. The Bible word for heart takes in the seat of a man's intellectual, his mental, and his volitional life, as well as his emotional life. One man has said in describing the biblical concept of the heart, here in the heart, the spiritual life pulsates. Here in the heart dwells God and the spirit in the child of God.

10:52 Here in the unsaved, wickedness and the devil himself dwell. If you want an interesting study, take the word heart in your concordance and trace it out from Genesis to Revelation, and you know what you'll find? You'll find that the biblical word heart includes, and this is only suggested this morning, it includes the conscience. You have the record in Genesis chapter 20 of Abraham's sojourns, and he comes to a heathen king by the name of Abimelech, and he figures, well my wife Sarah, she's a pretty good looker, and he might cast his eyes on her and say I want her for myself, so I've got to somehow fool him, so I'll say she's my sister.

11:32 She's not my wife, for he'll kill me so he can have her. And you remember what happened in the story? That Abimelech took Sarah, but the Lord restrained her, restrained him from cohabiting with her. And when it became known what the real facts were, he said to Abraham, in the integrity of my heart, I did this thing.

11:54 You see what he's saying? I did it with a good conscience, but he relates the conscience as a faculty, as a part of his heart. Isaiah 6.10 reveals that the heart includes the understanding.

12:09 In Isaiah 6.10, these words included in the commission of the prophet Isaiah, a very dreary commission. And God says, Make the heart of this people fat, make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes, lest they see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and understand with the heart. You see, the intellectual comes in.

12:34 There is an understanding that is the function of the heart, not merely of the intellect. So you have the conscience as part of the heart, in Genesis 20 and verse 5. In Isaiah 6.10, you have the understanding.

12:47 In 1 Corinthians 2.9, you have the imagination. Paul, quoting again from the Old Testament, says, and I read from 1 Corinthians 2 and verse 9, But as it is written, The things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, and which entered not into the heart of man. You see what he's saying?

13:08 God has now revealed for us, things that never entered the wildest imaginations of men. And the imagination is regarded as a part of the heart. And the heart, of course, includes the deepest affections. Acts 11.23 The apostles exhorted the young believers that with purpose of heart, they should cleave unto the Lord. Luke 21.14 Jesus said, Settle it in your hearts not to meditate beforehand. There the emphasis is upon the will.

13:42 He says, Make a decided choice of the will. Now what am I saying with all of this? What I'm saying is this. When Paul wrote, having had the eyes of the heart enlightened, he wrote the word heart not as a 20th century American, but as a Jew, steeped in this rich Biblical concept of the heart.

14:09 This is why the writer to the Proverbs says, Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life. Now picture the heart. That seat of a man's emotional, intellectual, volitional life, taking in the conscience, the understanding, the imaginations, the affections, and the will. And Paul says that the heart has eyes.

Meaning of 'Eyes' and 'Enlightened'

14:37 Now it's obviously a figure of speech. But it's a beautiful figure of speech. What is the function of an eye? What is the function of your eye this morning?

14:48 What are the functions of your eyes constantly? You ever stopped and asked yourself, What is my eyeball? You enjoy the use of it all. But if you asked yourself, What is the eye?

15:01 Well I think if you think about it for a while, you'll come to the conclusion that the eye is the organ of sight. It is that by which we are enabled to perceive things of reality in their true shape, color, and form. If you had no eyes, you would hear a voice this morning if you had ears. But you would have no idea of the shape, the form, the color of the creature out of which and from which the voice came.

15:31 It is your eye that enables you to discern the form, the shape, the color, etc. of the one who speaks. Now if your eye is to see, there must be two things. It must be healthy and able to receive light.

15:49 And secondly, there must be light bouncing upon objects and into the eye. Let me illustrate. This past week, I had to take my father-in-law for a checkup at the eye doctor. And in the course of the examination, he was informed that he has begun to have a cataract growing over one of the eyes.

16:09 Now what will happen? If that cataract continues to develop, a time will come when he will no longer be able to perceive things in their proper shape and form. And if the cataract is thick enough, it will even blot out light itself. What happens?

16:26 Well, there is disease in the eye. There is this film over the aperture through which the light is to come. The eye can no longer function. He still has an eye, but he can no longer use it as an organ of sight because it is not a healthy eye.

16:41 Take another illustration. Here is a person who has two healthy eyes, but he is in a room that is used for developing photographs. It is a dark room. And not a ray of light enters that room.

16:53 He has got two healthy eyes, but he can see absolutely nothing. Why? Because there is no light bouncing off any of the objects to enter the eye. But the moment he flips the switch, what happens?

17:03 He can see. Here are his developing pans. Here are the little lines where he hangs up his film. Here are the chemicals.

17:09 They were all there. And he had two good eyes that were capable of seeing things. But what did he lack? He lacked light bouncing off the objects and into the eye.

17:19 Now you say, that is very obvious. Yes, it is. And it was very obvious to Paul. Because 20 centuries have done nothing to change the function of the eyeball.

17:29 They have done nothing to change these basic facts of our physical world. Now put these two things together and you see what the phrase means. Paul says, having the eyes of the eye and the eyes of the heart enlightened. That word enlightened simply means to illuminate.

17:49 As a candle or a lamp illuminates a room, Luke 11.34. As the light of God's glory will illuminate the New Jerusalem, Revelation 22.5.

17:55 What happens when you walk into a dark room and flip the switch? You illuminate it. Paul says, the eyes of the heart were illuminated. The heart, the seat in center of the heart was illuminated.

18:06 The eyes of the heart were illuminated. The heart, the seat in center of the heart was illuminated. The eyes of the heart were illuminated. The heart, the seat in center of your whole emotional, intellectual, and volitional, the seat of your spiritual life had an eye, Paul says.

All Men Have a Heart with Eyes by Creation

18:23 And light was shed upon that eye, thus flooding the heart with light. Now, that's what the words say. But now, what message do they convey to us? And I want to suggest four things this morning, if time permits.

18:41 First of all, this is the word that Paul uses in the text. This text indicates Paul's understanding that all men, fellows, girls, have a heart with eyes by virtue of being created in the image of God. All men have a heart with eyes by virtue of being created in the image of God. Notice he does not say, having had a heart created or having had eyes created, he says, I'm praying that God may give you the spirit of the heart or may give you the spirit as the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, having had the eyes of your heart enlightened. The new factor that grace brought was enlightenment. Grace did not create a heart in the Ephesians. Grace did not create eyes in the heart.

19:37 You say, Pastor, that's a very obvious thing. What in the world are you bringing that out for? Oh, there's a reason. You know me well enough to know that.

19:46 When man in his state of nature as a creature was made with the heart, this seat of emotional, intellectual and volitional life with a conscience, with understanding, with judgment, with the capacity of self-reflection, and when man falls to his lowest in corruption, in sin and depravity, he is still a creature built of worlds more elevated than the most cultured beast. Man, at his worst, in the light of the Bible, is infinitely more glorious a creature than the most cultured beast or animal. And this is a note that needs desperately to be sounded in our day. People say, we don't want the Bible's doctrine of sin and depravity and corruption. Listen, listen, I would far rather have the Bible doctrine of man as a creature who has a heart and who has a moral and a spiritual eye, and be told that that heart is corrupt and the eye is blind, but still to be a creature with a heart and with an eye than to be nothing but a beast who is the highest expression of the inevitable forces of the evolutionary process. And the most cursed thing

21:15 about the doctrine of a mere mechanistic evolution is the sheer forces that surround him and are bound up within him as it dehumanizes man. And when man begins to think he's nothing but an animal, he'll live like an animal. And isn't it interesting that in an age when the Biblical doctrine of man's depravity as a creature who was made with heart and with eyes, when that doctrine was most believed, though you did not have proportionately more Christians, much more dignity and honor to life itself. Why?

21:55 Because a man who knows that he's blind as a creature made in the image of God and has a heart as a creature made in the image of God is a far more noble creature than the man who begins to believe he's nothing but an animal. And you begin to think that man is nothing but the present production of his genes, of his cells, of electrical impulses, of hormones and glandular secretions. What a terrible situation is on your hands and that's what we're witnessing. Some of you older folks who just scratch your head and say, what in the world's happening? Everything's going apart at the seams. This is what's happened. People have not understood the Biblical doctrine that man by virtue of being created in the image of God is made with a heart and made with moral and spiritual eyes.

All Men Have Darkened Hearts by the Fall

22:56 And no matter what sin does bring him, even in hell, the sinner will have a heart and will have eyes. There's a second thing that we rightly deduce from the text. The message these words convey is not only that all men by virtue of creation have a heart and eyes but secondly, all men have darkened hearts by virtue of the fall. Notice the text.

23:25 Having had the eyes of your heart enlightened, a clear indication that man has a heart is a clear indication that at a specific point in time this illumination came to the Ephesians. Prior to that, the eyes of the heart were not enlightened and the absence of light is darkness. And this is the universal testimony of the word of God that man since the fall, though he has a heart and though he has eyes in that heart, the heart is full of darkness and the result of that darkness is that men cannot see things as they really are. If we could plunge this building into total darkness and then for ten minutes rearrange everything here, you would have no ability to see the things as they really are. Maybe the pulpit would be hanging from the beam and maybe we would take some of you and turn it up on its end, make all of those changes but if the room was in total darkness you would have no ability to see things as they really were. You might sit there and imagine the pulpit is still in the center and you might bring in your mind a memory of what was but that does not mean that that is what is.

24:54 And it would take the turning on of the light and the pulling back of the drapes to show things in their right and whether things have changed or gone according to what has been the scrum in their situation He's a part of the faculty of the heart. And he says there is this blindness of the mind, this blindness of the heart, so that the sinner does not see things as they really are. The truth about Jesus Christ is that He is the effulgence of God's glory. All the beauty of the Godhead radiates from the perfections of the Son of God. The God of this world blinds the mind.

25:56 So the man cannot see things as they are, and he sits in a church like this, and he hears of Christ, and he hears people singing of Christ, and he may see the radiant glow of the joy of Christ in the countenances of men and in the voices of men. And he says, I can't see it. Why? The God of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not.

26:21 Paul uses this very concept in this very letter, chapter 4 and verse 18. Notice how he states it there. Ephesians 4. And verse 18.

26:32 This I say therefore and testify, verse 17, that you no longer walk as the Gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind, being darkened where? In the understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them. Now notice, because of the hardening of their heart, He ties the blindness of the mind with the hardness of the heart. The understanding, he says, is darkened.

27:04 That's why the whole concept of the coming of Messiah, particularly in the book of Isaiah, is pictured as what? The dawning of light. Light shall spring out of darkness. And you find it again and again in the prophecy of Isaiah.

27:20 We don't have time to go into the references. But may I suggest that this is the only explanation for man?

27:27 Man, this creature, who is so fascinating, even to his fellow creatures, in some areas so noble, so capable of such tremendous accomplishments, and yet in other areas, he acts like a foul fiend of hell. What's the answer? What is the answer to this creature man, who by thought and by reflection and by comparison and by diligent application can conquer and master his own world until he sends some of its inhabitants to the nearest, to the nearest,

28:02 satellite in that world, the moon, who can penetrate the depths of the mysteries of so much of his creation. The dog, the cow, the chimpanzee can't do this. What is this creature man, who on the one hand can accomplish such things that make us say why he's almost like a god,

28:25 and at the same time can perpetrate the kind of evils that make us say he must be first cousin to the devil.

28:36 I'll tell you the answer. He is a creature made with a heart and with eyes, made in the image of God, but the eyes of the heart have been darkened so that the things that should regulate the totality of his intellectual and emotional and volitional life, he doesn't see them in their proper light. You see, for man to function as man, he should function with the predominant perspective in the whole of his life being eyes. I am a creature made in the image of God.

29:11 I am made to reflect God. I am made to know God. I am made to obey God. I am made to know his Son.

29:21 I am made to know his Gospel. Those are the great issues that should mold man. Now in the depths of his being, his heart, out of which all the issues of life flow, what's the problem? The eye to the heart has, cataracts.

29:39 So he doesn't see God as he is, his creator. He doesn't see God's law as he ought, as a gracious standard of obedience. He doesn't see his Gospel, the glory of his Son, the beauty of his truth, and all of these great substantial spiritual realities. So what does he do?

30:00 He does exactly what a blind man would do, coming into a room that he's never been in before, stumble and fall, and, careen from object to object. That's the explanation of man.

30:16 The biblical explanation alone satisfies.

30:21 Men have darkened eyes, hence a darkened heart. The only way the light comes into the heart is through the eye. That's what Jesus meant when he said, the light of the body is the eye. All that I do in the totality of my body, in its activity, is regulated by what this eye tells.

30:41 So if I start to walk into an object, the eye says, no, an object, walk around it.

30:47 But he says, if the organ that should be the inlet of light is itself shrouded in darkness, the whole body is filled with darkness.

30:57 Man's supposed to be governed by his heart, but a heart that has an eye with 20-20 vision to see God, to see his law, to see his glory, to live to his praise. But man's in darkness.

31:12 He doesn't see these things. Hence he lives, the way he lives. And the sad thing is, he loves that darkness. John 3 and verse 19.

31:24 This is the condemnation that light has come into the world and men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. Neither will they come to the light lest their deeds should be reproved.

31:44 That's the picture. And this text assumes all of that. It's there. I'm not reading something in.

Some Men Have Their Eyes Enlightened by Grace

31:49 As Paul thinks of the Ephesians, he says, Thank God, as I pray that you'll have the grace of the Spirit for further illumination. Thank God the eyes of your heart, which were given by God, but darkened by sin, have been illuminated. And that brings us to the third part of the message of the text. Some men have had their eyes enlightened by grace.

32:16 You say, how do you get grace in there? Oh, it's beautiful. Just? Just the very form of the verb.

32:22 He doesn't say, having enlightened your eyes. He uses a passive verb. Having had the eyes of your heart enlightened. He said, light has come, but you didn't flip the switch.

32:37 Someone else did. Someone else did. Having had the eyes of your heart enlightened. Some men have had their eyes enlightened by grace.

32:50 And he uses a form, a form of the verb, which means they were enlightened at a point in time and they remain enlightened until this day. Who are those people? The people he's already described in the early part of the chapter. Chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world.

33:07 Predestined unto sonship. Redeemed by blood. They've heard. They've believed.

33:13 They've been sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. He doesn't introduce a new class of people. It's that class that we've described in great, great detail in our exposition of the first part of the chapter. Some men have their eyes enlightened by grace.

33:32 Hence, conversion is sometimes simply used to determine an enlightenment. In Hebrews 10.32, when the writer to Hebrews is using a synonym for the conversion of the Hebrews, notice how he uses it, and it's the same word in the original, but called to remembrance the former days in which after ye were enlightened.

Enlightenment is a Prerequisite for Understanding God's Things

33:58 He says your conversion was this opening of the darkness of the eyes of the heart. And then the fourth thing that's in the text is this enlightenment of grace is the necessary prerequisite for understanding the things of God. Paul assumes that his prayer for the Ephesians for more illumination will be answered because he says, you have had the eyes of your heart already enlightened. And the best commentary I know on this principle is Matthew 13.

34:35 I want you to look at it. It's a verse that mystified me for years. But with each passing year that I remain amongst you as a people, the more I understand this verse. It's one of those verses that I think experience alone can teach in terms of its profound meaning.

34:56 Jesus has been speaking in parables to the multitudes. The disciples get alone with him, verse 10 of Matthew 13, and said, why do you speak unto them in parables? And he answered and said unto you, it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.

35:17 The grace of God has opened your eyes, but it hasn't opened theirs. Now look at verse 12. For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have, shall have abundance. But whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away that which he hath.

35:36 And in another gospel account we read the words, that which he seemeth to have. See what he's saying? To him that has, more shall be given, and he'll have abundance. From him that hath not, shall be taken away that which he seems to have.

35:53 Get the picture. Here's a great multitude of people who seem to have the eyes of the heart, enlightened to the teaching of Jesus. They're hanging on every word.

36:04 By degrees the crowd narrows. People go away scratching their heads saying, I don't understand what in the world he's talking about. All those crazy parables. Simple little stories, but what in the world do they mean?

36:17 And then it's a while later, you read about it in John 6, he begins to talk about eating his flesh and drinking his blood. And no man can come to me except the Father which has sent me draw him. And it says, many of his disciples went back and walked with him no more. And then he turns to Peter in the 12 and says, will you also go away?

36:36 And what was the answer? To whom else can we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. What happened?

36:45 To those who had, more was given until they had the abundance of the New Testament revelation. And those who seem to have lost even what they apparently had. You get the message? What happens?

37:01 What will happen under the exposition of the latter part of this paragraph as we get into such lofty concepts as the hope of his calling, the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, the exceeding greatness of his power? Some of you are going to say, what in the world is he talking about? Why did the apostle spend his breath saying I'm praying that you'll have these things? These are such spiritual concepts that unless the eye of the heart has been opened, your apparent awareness of spiritual truth will increasingly appear in its proper light, nothing but darkness.

37:42 To him that hath shall be given. To him that hath not shall be taken away that which he seems to have. This enlightenment of grace is a necessary prerequisite to understand the things of God. And what a humbling thing.

37:57 What a humbling thing.

How to Know if Your Eyes Have Been Enlightened

38:00 And yet this is the whole method of grace. Now, this brings us in conclusion to the most burning question that you can contemplate this morning. How can I tell, Pastor, if my eyes have been enlightened? We've looked at the doctrine of the text based upon an understanding of the words of the text.

38:18 Now, as we apply the whole to ourselves, how can I tell if my eyes have been enlightened? Would Paul be able to assume that the eyes of my heart had been enlightened so that he would pray for me that the Spirit would be given in increasing measures of revelation? Well, let me suggest a very simple answer to the question how can I tell and then we'll trace it out along several lines. If you have had the eyes of your heart enlightened, the proof will be that you have been enabled to begin to see things as they really are in the center of your being.

39:02 When the eyes of the heart have been enlightened, it means I begin to see things as they really are in the center of my being and what I see there affects the totality of my life. That's the principle.

39:20 Let's look at several specifics. First thing, you will know what the darkness is.

39:28 You say, now you're really talking double-dutch to me. All right, follow me now. Here's a man born in a room without one shred of light coming into it. Born in a room of total darkness.

39:41 He is reared in that place of total darkness. Never once is a crack of light let in. He's known nothing but absolute darkness from the moment of his birth. That man doesn't know what darkness is.

39:57 You may tell him you are living in darkness, but darkness is just a word. And you know the first time he understands what darkness is? When someone comes and opens the door and brings him out into the light and he says, this is right!

40:14 I was in! But it, it takes the light to show him what the darkness is. And the first evidence that God has opened the eyes of your heart is that you know what the darkness is.

40:40 The preachers talk about, you say, oh God, yes. Oh God, yes. I was in the darkness. I saw no beauty in your son.

40:49 I saw no glory in your person. I saw no amiableness in the life of holiness. Oh God, how dark was my darkness. Do you know what the darkness is?

41:02 Experientially, experimentally, personally, inwardly.

41:09 That's why the first gospel light, Acts 26, 18, God said to open their eyes, to turn them from darkness to light. Paul never knew how much darkness he was in. He thought he was living in a room blazing with light as the self-righteous Jew. Old Testament, living in the light of his pharisaic tradition, living in the full blazing light of all of this until God said, look, I'm going to blind you so I can show you what darkness and light are.

41:42 And so a light from heaven blinded his eyes and for the first time he had inward light and the first thing that inward light did was to say, I've been in spiritual darkness.

Evidences of Enlightened Eyes: Glory in Christ and Beauty in Holiness

41:55 That's the mystery of the gospel. The first beams of this light show us what the darkness is. Second thing, if our eyes have been opened to behold things as they were as they are, we'll not only know what the darkness is, we'll behold a radiant glory in the person of Jesus Christ. Second Corinthians 4, 6, God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness hath shined in our hearts to do what?

42:25 To give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Second Corinthians 3, 18, Paul says of Christians, but we all are we all with open face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord. John says in John 1, 14, we beheld His glory. That's the mark of eyes that have been opened.

42:55 Jesus Christ is not a word. He's not a mere theological concept.

43:02 We beheld glory in His face. We acknowledge Him to be Lord, worthy of our obedience. We acknowledge Him to be a mighty Savior worthy of our trust. The light that comes to the eyes of the heart is a sense in which having shown the darkness, the first object that is seen with any definition and clarity is the glory of God in the face of Christ.

43:33 Christ has been as it were there, speaking in the overtures of the gospel, calling to us through His servants and we beheld no glory in Him that we should desire Him. But when the eyes of the heart are enlightened and we see Him for what He is, then the heart runs out and says, Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do? My Lord and my God. Let me ask you this morning, what is Jesus Christ to you?

44:02 Has God opened the eyes of your heart and shown you such glory in Christ that your heart runs out to Him in love, in trust and in affection? Anyone who's ever seen Him for what He is couldn't help but love Him.

44:24 And then the third thing, and I'll close with this, you will see a desirable beauty in the life of holiness. When we're in the dark, one of the evidences of that darkness is we think a life of holiness is the most miserable, constricting, unthinkable course of life imaginable.

44:53 And you look upon these Christians who live so strictly and you say what bondage! But when the eyes of the heart are enlightened you see that a life of holiness is a life of bliss and is a beautiful thing worthy to be desired for its own intrinsic beauty.

45:16 Now has that happened to you? Do you look upon a life of holiness as a life of intrinsic beauty and worth? It is. For God made man.

45:29 He not brought lightness and holiness and goodness and truth made him with an eye that saw that such a life was amiable. Sin came and darkened the eye until the heart full of the darkness said, I will refuse a life of holiness at all costs. But when that eye is open and the heart beholds then the man runs in the way of God's commandments. This is the essential prerequisite for understanding spiritual truth the eyes of the heart having been enlightened.

46:09 Have yours been enlightened?

46:12 Have they? I'm not asking if you carry around in your head a tub full of notions about Christ. Have the eyes of the heart been enlightened? That's it.

46:25 If so, I believe God will take us in divisions of his own glory and grace in our further expositions that I hope will fill us with joy unspeakable and full of glory if I don't preach myself out of a voice in the process. May the Lord bless the truth of his word to each of our hearts. Let us pray.